The title of ‘Full Metal Jacket’ refers to bullets, of which there are
many. Directed by Stanley Kubrick from a screenplay by Kubrick,
‘Dispatches’ author Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford, who wrote the
novel ‘The Short-Timers’ on which the film is based, ‘Full Metal
Jacket’ is one of the better films made about the experience of the
average U.S. soldier in Vietnam. Not as metaphysical as ‘Apocalypse
Now’ or ‘Platoon,’ ‘Jacket’ is also more down to earth -- even if, like
its predecessors, it occasionally employs its main character as
narrator.

Pvt. Joker (Matthew Modine), as he is dubbed by his Parris Island drill
sergeant (Lee Ermey), is our eyes and ears in ‘Jacket,’ though he is
not the film’s focal point. Indeed, ‘Jacket’ nearly breaks into two
separate halves: the first involves the brutally rigorous and
ultimately for some entirely destructive U.S. Marine training course;
the second half takes place in the cities and combat zones of Vietnam,
just before, during and after the Tet Offensive.

The film’s first half is more linear and character-driven, as we
witness the gradual disintegration of a heavyset, well-intentioned but
slow-witted recruit the drill sergeant calls Gomer Pyle (Vincent
D’Onofrio). Poor Leonard -- his real name -- is humiliated and
physically battered in every possible way to make him into a soldier.
The training works, but at horrific cost. The second half is more
generally about the horrors of warfare, though there is a blackly
hilarious scene in Chapters 17 and 18 set in a Vietnam office of the
official armed services paper Stars and Stripes. Kubrick brings a deep
sense of pity to the earlier sections and a you-are-there ambience of
resigned dread to the latter.

Chapter 2 contains an introduction to the Marines delivered so
scabrously and fiercely by Ermey (a real-life drill instructor before
he took up acting) that your jaw hangs open with equal parts admiration
and outrage. The sound clarity on his monologue is exemplary. Hissing
water in Chapter 5 seems to overtake other sounds more than seems
appropriate for the mix, but Chapter 9 compensates with an excellent
acoustical indoor echoing effect. Major firefights in Chapters 18 and
26 show off the most dramatic sound effects, with a great booming
weapon that will show off the bass on any system that can handle it.

Visually, practically any sequence in the latter half is arresting, but
Chapter 20’s mixture of pink smoke, blue dusky sky and green trees is
most startling for its unexpected prettiness.

Films have been made before and since about the hellishness of war, but
Kubrick and his talented writers and cast make us understand -- at
least partially -- the human costs in hearts and minds that are
incurred even before the physical damage begins on the battlefield.